Thursday, December 30, 2010

Inalienable moral and legal right to life comes before health

Eli Y. Adashi, MD, MS
Brown University
272 George St.
Providence RI 02906

Re: The right to health as the unheralded narrative of Health Care Reform, JAMA, December 15, 2010, p. 2639

Dear Dr. Adashi,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

I suppose you could stretch "Life" to include health care, but then you'd first need "life," and have to include the "right to life" as one of those rights too, and until you do, all the UN global health care standards, government regulations, and universal reforms fall flat. Once a baby is chopped up or burned alive and dropped into the trash, all the health standards in all the acts, panels, conferences and world organizations won't make a bit of difference.

Norma Bruce
Faculty Emeritus
The Ohio State University

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

7 billion on this planet is plenty. It's about time we take some drastic actions to limit population. Knocking a few cells out of a uterous is hardly an abortion, and should be just one more method of birth control.

Dan Nieman said...

Good job Norma! Your letter said it well. God bless

Anonymous said...

Very well put, Norma!

Brenda

Norma said...

Anon 8:38: You too were once a cluster of cells.

Anonymous said...

Murray sez:
Anon 8:38 was a few cells short of a cluster.

Norma said...

a dazzle of cells

a wedge of cells

a hover of cells (that's trout)